Well, about a week or so ago I was making my rounds on my bike when I stumbled upon an old, half-rotted wood chair being tossed away and decided to take it back to the workshop to salvage as much as I possibly could from it.

If I realized I’d be having these find-junk-and-transform-it adventures so often I’d start taking pictures of the whole process from start to finish. Maybe I’ll do that next time.

Anyways, my original thought was to saw the chair-back free from the rest, sand it down and make some sort of odd animal head, like I’ve done before.

But somewhere along the way it became this, which now hangs on a telephone pole near the Bank/Fourth intersection where it will hopefully brighten a few people’s days.

I’m sure that the connecting ground between street art and urban planning which I’ve been looking for for quite a while will be found in a decentralized, do-it-yourself and fluid approach towards planning. The growing urban farming movement is an example of a place where this line of thought is emerging. Eventually some sort of institutional approach towards locally producing our food will be (and will have to be)implemented, but as it stands now it’s still extremely DIY and collaborative.
Planetizen is a great urban-planning related blog, and their article on Urban Farming in Detroit is worth a read (especially since Detroit is being gutted in more ways than we would imagine. Food Deserts are growing at an alarming rate)

Recently I’ve been hesitant. I’ve been unsure as to what direction I’d take streetart-wise (with a combination of my conventional art-work and gradschool plans beginning to eat up whatever time I have for working on street related stuff). I’ve always been interested in both bits and pieces of forgotten history and the people who take up the task of bringing those forgotten truths out into the light, and recently I’ve been reading about the number of unsolved murders in Ottawa. Even when cases were solved some seemed to fade quicker from memory than others, although the name of Ardeth Wood still makes the front-pages of our daily papers on occasion.

The latest piece I’ve been working on is a memorial to Kelly Morrisseau, who was murdered by an unknown assailant over two and a half years ago. The memorial itself is made from found plywood, and was shaped with hand-saws and painted over a one-week period. Minto Park, home to the Female Victims of Violence memorial, was the logical choice of site for this particular piece. I don’t know if I’ve done Ms. Morrisseau justice in my creation, but I’d like to see justice come about in her still-open murder investigation.

IF YOU”VE GOT A BLOG, PLEASE REPOST THIS STORY. WE NEED TO BRING SOME ATTENTION TO THIS CASE.

Kelly Morrisseau was seven months’ pregnant when she was murdered on December 10th, 2006. She was found, naked and clinging to life from a dozen stab wounds, in a parking-lot near Gatineau Park and died in hospital that morning. She left behind three children.
While a few leads came in initially, the investigation into her murder seems to have all but dried up and her death seems to have been forgotten by the people of our city.

Now I know that I am going to upset some people by saying what I am going to say next, but it will be said regardless. Not every murdered woman is named Ardeth, and it seems that the ones not fortunate enough to have been so blessed are shuffled off to the back pages in a hurry. Should we forget Kelly Morrisseau’s murder because she was involved in the sex-trade industry? Because she had her first child at age sixteen? Because she came from a First Nations reserve? Because she wasn’t a blonde virgin with a fiance and a Masters’ education??

There is a $20,000 reward in place for information leading to the arrest of Ms. Morrisseau’s killer.

On a different note, I’ve spent a lot of my free time building boxes and miniature cabinets out of scrap wood in preparation for an upcoming art-show. At some point I’d like to learn how to cut joints and build sliding mechanisms for chests of drawers.
Everything here is nearly 100 per cent recycled (with the exception of paint, of course, and hinges). Door pulls and screws were salvaged from discarded furniture.
I also got to meet Zoom (of Knitnut fame) today and chat with her and GC briefly about several things, including Duncan.